Local events mark National Chemistry Week Oct. 17-23

The Wisconsin Section of the chemistry department, this week is observing National Chemistry Week.

To mark the event, which focuses on the importance of chemistry in our daily lives, local organizers are presenting a series of programs for seventh-grade students at Cherokee and O’Keeffe middle schools.

The schools are piloting a new science curriculum that introduces chemistry in the seventh grade. The Madison Metropolitan School District will adopt this new sequence district-wide in the future, and the local ACS section and UW–Madison chemistry department are eager to offer enrichment experiences for these science students.

Since the 2004 theme for the week is “Health and Wellness,” the students are conducting hands-on experiments about the chemistry of our blood and how it carries oxygen to our cells. A team of 27 volunteer chemists (primarily graduate and undergraduate students) led by Diane Nutbrown of the UW–Madison chemistry department, is visiting 14 classrooms, introducing approximately 300 seventh graders to various forms of hemoglobin, methods to measure blood’s oxygen content and the chemical benefits of vitamin C.

National Chemistry Week is an outreach program of the American Chemical Society developed to highlight the importance of chemistry to our everyday lives and the nation’s economy. A key goal is to show young people how important chemistry will be in solving critical problems our nation faces — ranging from developing new sources of energy so the nation is less dependent on foreign oil, to developing new drugs specifically designed to address diseases that have as yet not been conquered.

The American Chemical Society is the world’s largest professional scientific society with a membership of more than 159,000 chemists and chemical engineers. Charles Casey, professor of chemistry at UW–Madison, currently serves as the society’s president.